Last Day of 2021

 Well, it's the last day of 2021.

It's been a decent year. Victories for the Smith family were measured in pleasant occurrences. Andy found a job that pays a decent wage. To celebrate, I bought him a car so that he won't have to go into a new situation having to face a monthly vehicle payment. Carole and I got a membership to the local city-owned fitness center that allowed Carole to take activity classes and for me to get back into weightlifting (in a strictly old-man kind of way). I lost weight, which is rarely a bad thing. My novel WORKING CLASS HERO was republished and has been a lot more successful than I would have thought. The sequel is almost finished (although as I write this it's five months late).

Carole retired from her old job after 31+ years. She started a new one to count out the time to her own  full-time retirement on her 62nd birthday in less than two years. We make plans that we may or may not be able to see through. But make them we will.

So, I go into this last night of 2021 looking forward to 2022. I've long since stopped worrying about Covid-19 and what it means. I got my vaccine shots. I have an appointment for the booster. Medicare kicks in for me in less than six months. We're planning vacations for the year. Two or three with the travel trailer; and one, maybe two by jet. Yes, 2019 taught me to not put too many eggs in the vacation basket due to the virus and its various mutations. But we'll do something, no matter what. Worst case, we have six isolated acres 4,000 feet above sea level in the North Carolina mountains. We can park the trailer there and chill out, hike, build campfires, grill, sit in the self-contained travel trailer and take it easy deep in the forest. We'll see.

But I don't think travel is going to be the pain in the ass that it was in 2019/2020. I suppose we'll be able to take the trips we're planning. I'll continue to write. I may take a photography class to learn how to properly do what I've self-taught. There are a lot of things I have time to do now, and I hope to explore them.

I leave with this image. The last few hours before we take down the tree. I recalled this week that one of the things I loved to do when I was in grade school was to sit in front of the Christmas tree and just gaze at it. Long before I heard about meditation and what it was I was doing it. Cross-legged I'd place myself a few feet from those branches and the bright colors and just sit there, gazing, letting the sight of it take me deep into my thoughts. I told my best friend Chuck how I enjoyed that, letting the symmetry and glitter of that image take me away.

Therefore, in the waning hours of the life of this year's wonderful tree, the glittering bulbs, the ornaments, the shining star, the scent of balsam filling the room, I decided to do as I did as a child. I sat cross-legged there, transported myself decades back, recalling the sweet nostalgia of why I still adore this mad season of excess.

I love these holiday months. For me, it truly is the most wonderful time of the year. I hope to live the next eleven months in peace, finding happiness with my small family, and enter in to another such season celebrating our lives and all lives. That's something that never comes in excess.

This stuff always makes me feel like a kid, and I had a good time as a kid. That's as good a reason as any for loving the holidays, I reckon.

Christmas 2021

 People say I'm cynical, and it may be so. The same people who say that I'm cynical tend to give me a hard time because I enjoy Christmas so much. Yes, it can be a difficult season for some, but the tradition of it and the childhood memories the holiday gave me have always made me happy. So, as an adult, I have done my best to have a great time of it every season and to try to make my family happy at that time, also. I reckon I'm not too cynical.

This was a good Christmas. We didn't have more than the average amount of hardships this year, so that means it was a pleasant twelve months. All of us are healthy and financially stable. You can't ask for much more than that.

Here's to silly trees in the house, bright lights and jolly decorations on that tree, lots of gifts beneath those fragrant balsam branches, holiday tunes playing, and having the family close.

It was nice.

Our Autumn Vacation: Smokemont Campground, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

 Every year Carole and I take a Halloween week vacation. We hook up the Casita and try to find a place where we can view spectacular Fall color. Despite propaganda from other parts of the country, I have found that the most vibrant and varied Autumn displays are in the southern Appalachians. Other parts of the country depend on one or two species of hardwoods to paint the local landscape with color, but in the big southern mountains there are hundreds of species of deciduous trees transitioning from green to all manner of eye-popping hues.

In 2019 we went to the Elkmont Campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and hit that amazing forest at its peak. In 2020 we headed a bit farther west and north and traveled to the Red River Gorge of Kentucky and once again hit those trees at full color display. The forests there are not as varied but are still amazing to see. This year, we returned to the Great Smoky Mountains, but opted to see the southern end of the Park and stayed at Smokemont Campground.

Here, then, are some of the views we were afforded on this year's version of our annual trip. We're not sure where we're going in Fall of 2022. Maybe to New England. 2023 we're going to try for a month-long journey to Colorado. Carole has never seen the aspens when they put on their annual show of leafy gold.

When we arrived we realized that our initial reservation would not allow us to use our generator at the spot we'd chosen. So we asked if we could move to a generator-friendly spot. The ranger was able to accommodate us and we got a pull-through site in Section D where we could run our generator. We don't generally run it much...mainly to charge some of the electronic devices we take with us. After the first three nights they closed Section D and we moved to our original site in Loop B. At that time, when they close most of the loops, the entire campground is open for generator use.

On the night when the cold front arrived, pushing out the persistent rains, we awakened to find that our furnace was only blowing cold air because we'd run out of propane during the early morning. When I switched tanks I realized that it was empty. So we had to make a quick run into Cherokee to get one tank refilled. I had two spares at home, both full, but had neglected to check to make sure both tanks on the Casita were full before we left. I always manage to forget something. We scooted back to the campsite and I hooked the tank back on and the furnace fired up again. I hope not to repeat that mistake!

All in all, we had another relaxing, successful Fall color vacation!

A brief video displaying our two campsites at Smokemont.

Carole doesn't like pull-through campsites. This is because most of that type are exposed and don't offer much in the way of privacy. But these were fine. The next time we stay at Smokemont I'm going to reserve a pull-through site like this one.

This was the picnic table at our second campsite. We never really used it. The weather turned cold so we ended up eating inside, even though we cooked outside.

Our second campsite. That's the bathroom building behind us. Most National Parks do not offer any kind of hookups for RVs. No electric, water connection; also no bathhouses with showers. This campground was typical in that way. Flush toilets and sinks. We did fill up our freshwater onboard tank at the campground, and we took our Honda 2000 generator with us. So we generally have no need for traditional campground utilities.

The campground just before we left. October through March are the low season the the Park. We left on a Tuesday, so there were not many people left in the campground as we prepared to head out.

The last photo I took before we left. We didn't catch the colors are their peak, but they were spectacular anyway. They were actually peaking when we got to the Park but three days of heavy rain managed to bash a lot of the color off the trees. Still...it was a great color show.

Initially, I wasn't going to take any photos of the elk. But when the rain finally broke we drove to Oconaluftee (adjacent to the campground) and there were elk wandering about, grazing. The rut was just over and all of the bull elk were elsewhere. After the rut the bulls tend to congregate in male-only groups and chill out together. So the elk herd was reduced to cows and calves. As you can see, some of the trees had dropped their leaves during the hard rains, but the color was still spectacular.

An elk calf, its camouflage spots recently faded away.

This was at an overlook on Balsam Mountain Road on a drive we took after the rain finally broke.

Another view along Balsam Mountain Road at high elevation. The peaks here are over 5,000 feet. I like this view because of the obvious change of climate zones as altitude increases. You can see the stark delineation where the spruce-fir Canadian zone begins.

Sidelining Martin Goodman

Continuing essay to counter the constant erroneous corporate propaganda regarding the early days of Marvel Comics.

Another thing that the Lee droolies like to do is to claim that Stan Lee was a marketing genius guiding the corporate ship known as Marvel Comics. This never happened. Martin Goodman, the publisher and owner, held Lee in such low esteem that his junior cousin-by-marriage had to clear everything through the owner (Goodman) for all but the most minor decisions. Contrary to the lies made popular by later faux-historians, you can see that Martin Goodman was a hands-on publisher who paid very close attention to all of his publishing ventures, especially to Marvel Comics. Once Kirby and Ditko had revitalized the comics publishing portion of his publishing outfit he did not want the Comics Code Authority, or muckraking journalists, to come down on him with complaints against the material he was printing.  He was enjoying his resurgent economic success, while also searching for a buyer to make him a rich man. He didn't need complications and kept a very close eye on Marvel.

I mention all of this because I was recently referred to an article which repeats the fallacy that Lee was some kind of marketing genius, giving him credit where none is due.

Lee never marketed anything. Just as he never created, plotted, or wrote anything.

Lee was a rudderless shill. He depended upon upper management for all direction. All of it. Martin Goodman was the man who built a publishing empire from essentially nothing. Goodman hired the talent, paid them, saw to the day to day running of the show and made sure the bills were paid. And he certainly knew how and where to advertise and to make the decisions concerning customer outreach.

This article claimed that it was Lee who saw a way to expand sales by noticing new customers who hadn't been targeted. However, Lee didn't see any untapped market. He never directed any kind of promotional campaign or fan outreach. Hell, he couldn't buy paperclips for the office without permission so how was he supposed to find and toss advertising money at this great invisible prospective customer base?

Reporters like the fellow who wrote that article make a common error. They had seen that lying blowhard on TV, radio, or in too many print interviews for them to formulate any honest conclusions remotely based on the truth.

Lee was never executive material who could be trusted with a responsibility as important as marketing. If no corporate powerhouse had ever wanted his one dimensional car salesman schtick, his own cousin wasn't going to trust him with something as serious as advertising Marvel Comics. Lee was a subnormal jackass, and he was far too stupid to create any complicated or nuanced business models. He couldn't even plot the comic strips so often credited to him!

However, Lee was a shill who had value to various Marvel owners (and Marvel owners ONLY!) due to his (and the corporations) unfounded claims over the intellectual property stolen from creators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

Giving that creep credit for the hard work of Martin Goodman is akin to saying that the actor who portrayed The Marlboro Man was the Chief Financial Officer of a multi-national tobacco corporation. Would you say that some nameless actor was the business mastermind of the vast Marlboro Cigarette Company? Only a snookered moron would make that claim. Like the Marlboro Man, Lee portrayed a garish, posed, false character trotted out to blinker the hoi polloi. They train people to do that. They direct them how to say it, and when to repeat their scripted lines. But the costumed actors don't run the company. Neither did a shill working for Martin Goodman, Cadence Industries, etc.

To paraphrase Steve Ditko: A shill is a shill.

A fiction.

Martin Goodman, the man who actually built and guided a publishing company.

Countdowns and Possibilities.

 Carole and I tend to plan our vacations carefully. Some time back we were having problems with the leveling jacks on our Casita so a friend came over and removed them for us with a saw that sheared through the steel. It was great to be rid of the damned things, I must tell you.

Over the intervening months we kept putting off installing new jacks because we couldn't decide which brand and design to use. I wouldn't have thought there was that much variety, but there is. Finally, yesterday I took the trailer off to a shop to have new leveling jacks installed, and to have some other minor touch-up work done. I hope to have the Casita back in a few days. Then we'll start loading it up for our big Autumn trip to the Smokies. I may even go off to a NC state park or National Forest campsite for a few days. Who knows?

When Carole retires we're going to take some extensive trips that will stretch beyond a couple of weeks into as long as two months. We have found that we tend to get a bit stir crazy in our Casita in trips over fourteen days. We love the trailer and we also know people who take trips of several months in them, but that's not for us. So, in the months leading up to Carole's retirement we're going to sell our precious Casita and buy a new, larger fiberglass travel trailer. We'll likely purchase a 21-foot Escape, but it's possible we could go with a similar sized Bigfoot or Airstream. The jury is still out.

So, our backyard parking lot looks a bit empty with no Casita sitting in it waiting for the next trip. We're probably looking at only eighteen months or so of camping in it before we buy a new model. Unless we change our minds, there will be a very sad day when we say goodbye to the trailer that has carried us all over the Atlantic seaboard, down to the Florida Keys, and as far west (and north) as Glacier National Park. I can already say we'll miss Casita Girl (as Carole calls her).

Or maybe we'll change our minds and keep her. You never can tell.

Liar, Liar

 Presented as the alternative to decades of propaganda.

As I predicted long ago, with the death of the corporate shill known as Stan Lee, the truth about his career in comics is coming out at a more rapid pace than when he was still breathing. But while it's easier to get the word out concerning his moral crimes, it's no easier to deal with his fans when one is telling the truth about him.

I can only describe his fan base as religious fanatics. They have been fed a line about his divinity and if you challenge this line you are at risk of the same kind of attack you would expect from a crazed fundamentalist, or from a rabid animal. When you tell what really happened at Marvel after Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko transformed the publisher from a faltering outfit into a tremendous success the Liar's true believers will descend on you with knives out.

Here, then, are the basic truths:

What we know of today as the Marvel Universe was created mainly by Jack Kirby. To a lesser extent it was also given commercial success by Steve Ditko. There were additional contributors such as Bill Everett, Wally Wood, Dick Ayers, Don Heck, and others; but the mass of the modern fables emerged from the minds and talents of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

The big liar we call Stan Lee (Stanley Lieber) was the editor for the comics arm of a publishing company started by Martin Goodman. Lee was cousin-by-marriage to Goodman, so his installation into the company was an act of pure nepotism. No talent was involved, and no meritocracy was at work. A relative was shown the ropes and was provided with a steady paycheck at a very young age. Lee's lack of talent is obvious in that he never left the employ of his relative and stayed there over the years, never venturing forth to find gainful employment elsewhere, and never proving himself as anyone valuable enough for a head hunter to come calling. It's often said that Lee was a good salesman, but I always found him to be on a level with a scamming used car salesman. His personality was odious, at best.

But what service did he provide for Martin Goodman? After Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were allowed to create new titles to cash in on the superhero craze of the early 1960s, Goodman needed a salaried employee whose name could be attached to the intellectual property to cement the company's claim to that property. And, as the only salaried employee at the comics arm of Martin Goodman's corporation, Lee fit the bill.

So: the liar's name went on every book as writer. Later, Lee claimed to have created all of the titles and characters at the early Marvel Comics. He claimed to have created the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the Avengers, the Uncanny X-Men, Daredevil, the Mighty Thor, Dr. Strange, the Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man, Giant Man, Ant Man, etc. In fact, though, there is zero evidence that Lee invented any of the characters which he claimed to be writing. Also, there are credible claims that he wasn't even writing the parade of successful books appearing from the likes of Kirby, Ditko, Ayers, Wood, Everett, Heck, Romita, and company. Keep in mind that before the explosion of creativity provided from Kirby and Ditko, Goodman's most profitable enterprise was publishing a line of men's adventure fiction magazines. There was a  constant parade of talented writers in and out of the  building who were only too happy to expand dialog already provided  by the artists who were actually not only creating the characters, but plotting and writing them. For a couple of hours work these ghost-writers could earn grocery money. No big deal that another man's name went on. For in those days comic scripting was held in lower esteem than even the pulp fiction they were producing for Martin Goodman. Who cared if a no-talent bum put his signature to it?

Over the following months and years as Marvel's fortunes expanded Goodman sought to sell the company. I can imagine what he was thinking. He'd already seen his comic book business go through a boom and bust cycle from the early 1940s and through the 1950s, and he could have figured he was riding another wave that might soon crest and fall. He wanted to get out while the company was a ripe crop ready to be harvested and sold. Therefore, more than ever he needed a corporate shill that enabled him to claim ownership of the intellectual property that rightly resided with the men who had sweated it out: mainly Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. For that purpose alone, Lee's lying presence was invaluable.

Eventually, Goodman did sell Marvel. For enough cash so that he was able to retire to Florida as a wealthy man. What he never considered was that the value of Jack Kirby's creations was far more than he ever could have dreamed. The publisher never figured that his connivance with Liar Lee was a theft that would someday be measured in tens of billions of dollars. I cannot think of another theft of intellectual property that rivals what was stolen from Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. The monetary value of the likes of X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Avengers, Dr. Strange, etc. staggers the imagination. And as that wealth has increased, so did the lies of the man whose professional existence was provided for that sole purpose. And also continued the willingness for the various corporate owners to go along--they still needed that lie to live on.

In fact, though, we all know who created the characters. Kirby, Ditko, Everett, and others did. Who wrote the books? The artists who illustrated it were expected to plot and also write them. The editor placed his name on the credits page as "writer" when there is zero evidence he ever wrote anything other than poorly rendered promotional blurbs and columns, and an occasional butchering of dialog and scripts in some issues. The corporations claimed ownership for everything because of the existence of a sole salaried employee.

Today, as I said, the truth is emerging. We now know who created the characters and wrote and illustrated the stories. It wasn't the lying editor.

But telling this simple truth can still be a tough row to hoe. One has to deal with the army of zealots who believe the fallacy that a slimy grifter created the characters they love. These fans equate the face of a gleaming, grinning slug with their beloved comics. And there are the professional sellouts working in the comics industry who still feel the urge to kiss corporate ass after the lying bastard they once worked for is dead and rotting. Hopefully, these prostitutes will come to their senses and find enough dignity to stop lying for a dead thief and the corporate master he served. Maybe that will happen. But I doubt it.

ACCORDING TO JACK KIRBY by Michael Hill. Highly recommended.

The Amazing Spider-Man. Created by, plotted by, written by, penciled by, inked by Steve Ditko.

YouTube

I have a YouTube account. Occasionally I post video of my trips. Generally my videos are records of my vacations to places as diverse as the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, to hikes in Glacier National Park in Montana. They're there for my own pleasure, and as ways for friends and family to see some of the places I've visited. 

I don't do it for money since my account is too small for YouTube to assign it to monetization. There's a minimum number of subscribers one must have to earn funds on YouTube, and I don't have those subscribers.

However, I do watch a number of YouTube channels that are monetized. Some of them earn out impressive sums for their creators. One guy I used to watch had about a million subscribers by the time I stopped visiting his channel. And that's what I want to write about: the reason I stop viewing some content creators on YouTube.

The reason I stopped viewing the guy whose fan base grew to enormous numbers wasn't because he started making tons of money from it. I generally couldn't care less about that. What did bug me about it was purely selfish. Initially I thought of his show as something of a secret. But as his fan base ballooned to crazy numbers the novelty of it faded and I got bored with it and just stopped watching. It was just too much the same every episode, and I also got the impression that some of it was created content rather than the spontaneous exploration that had originally attracted me. So, I wrote it off and haven't seen it in about three years.

One channel I used to watch featured a working class couple who got into hiking for fitness. Their videos showed them as a couple of fatties who did look as if they had been in good shape once upon a time and had let themselves go. They tracked their weight loss as they tackled long hikes and steep mountains and as the months progressed they were no longer overweight and after about two years were once more in excellent physical condition. And they began to wear skimpier and skimpier (and expensive) hiking clothes, showing off their physiques. For whatever reason I began to suspect that the whole thing was a setup. They'd gone DeNiro Raging Bull and had intentionally gained forty pounds each with the scheme of losing the lard online to promote themselves. Finally, watching the pair of them prance around like a couple of tarts made me nauseous. I can't even recall the title of their channel or even if it still exists.

Another guy I used to watch because he posted the best Rocky Mountain hiking information I have ever seen. I could watch his videos and decide whether our not I wanted to tackle a particular mountain when my wife and I head west for a couple of months when she retires. His videos coughed up the finest trail beta I have ever seen with details about trail difficulty and how not to veer off route on some of the tougher hikes. However, he committed what I consider to be a cardinal sin when it comes to producing how-to videos: he got political. In his case it was just one comment. But it turned his show from something fun to watch and into a screed. I couldn't look at him or hear his voice without thinking of him as an idiot. Normally I don't care what a person's political or philosophical beliefs are; but if you're creating a channel about nature then you need to focus on that and only that. Again, I can't even recall his name or the title of his YouTube channel. His was a rare case wherein I actually blocked his presence.

Some creator content I just grow bored with, or happen upon another channel that does the same thing, but in a superior way.

Then there are the folk who achieve financial success with their show and rub it in their fan's faces. Again, I don't begrudge someone turning a profit. That's fine. One hiker/kayaker I follow has achieved success and thanks his fans for allowing him to earn out enough from YouTube to use the funds to travel more widely to more interesting locations. That's okay. But some of these folk just brag. Some of them end up buying expensive toys with the money the viewers allow them to get and show it off. "Look what you losers allowed me to buy." I've axed several shows over this. One couple accumulated many thousands of fans and then attached a button to their screen that allows suckers...I mean viewers...to send them money. The instant they did that I deleted their channel.

So, essentially, unless you are producing a YouTube channel about politics, then it's best to avoid such in your YouTube channel. Just don't do it. Yes, you can attract people of one particular political inclination or another, but you can also lose a bunch of fans who would otherwise watch your show and earn money for you. Just the facts, ma'am.

Finally, along the same vein, are the channels that reach a level of popularity when they become "influencers" in the eyes of manufacturers. This lot of creators get to a point where companies send them expensive gifts with the idea that they will dedicate an episode to giving a positive review of the gifted items. This is pretty much when I take leave of them. One of the channels I watched regularly until the past couple of weeks fell victim to this. His past few videos have been glowing reviews of merchandise that manufacturers have given him. Since he became a so-called influencer I haven't seen him post any of the local travel videos he was putting up almost weekly. I'll be saying goodbye to his channel, too.

And there you have it.

My Hike to the Summit of Mount LeConte and My Stay at LeConte Lodge.

 The first time I saw LeConte Lodge was on a dayhike to the summit of Mount LeConte in 1974. I took the Alum Cave Trail to the top of the mountain and spotted the lodge as I hiked up to the Cliff Tops overlook. Of course I had to take a detour and see the lodge. It was amazing to me that comfortable accommodations were located high on the mountain many miles from the nearest road and with the only access being steep and rocky single-file trails.

Back then the lodge was still being heated with firewood. Later, when the owners of this concession were no longer allowed to gather firewood, they switched to kerosene heaters; and these days the buildings and rooms are warmed with propane heaters.

After I climbed to the cliffs to take some photos and look out over the nearby peaks, I went back for another look at the lodge. I wanted to be able to stay overnight there and stopped in the office to ask how that was done. And, of course, I promised myself that one day I would make the trip up there and stay for a night or two.

Decades passed and somehow I never got the chance to go back, except for dayhikes to the summit. Over those years I managed to find myself hiking up there seven different times via three different trails. When I started working for the USPS I would call and try to arrange a reservation, but on the days that I had free there were no spots open. To draw a long tale short I had to wait until I was retired; to a time when I could take an open date no matter when it fell. Thus, last month I called and asked about any cancellations and found two dates open in August.

I ended up taking the first open date even though Carole and I would be camping for four days in the same Park the previous week. We would be coming home, and I would be returning to the Park for my hike to the top of LeConte two days later. So it goes. I no longer live by much of a schedule. I make the plans and don't need to worry about job responsibilities.

For this trip I chose to go up via a trail called The Boulevard. At about 8.4 miles it's longer than the others I had used, but I had been told it was a lot easier than the three with which I was familiar. This proved to be a load of crap, as it is harder than any of the other three. For my money, the best way up is still Alum Cave Trail. You climb more, but the distance is a brief five miles, and the scenery is superior to any of the four routes I've taken.

But I made it up. The hike took me about five and a half hours since I stopped to eat breakfast on the trail (protein bars and water). I also paused many times to take photographs, as I always do when I go hiking. The first part of the hike is 2.7 miles on the Appalachian Trail with a climb from 5300 feet at Newfound Gap to 6,000 feet near the top of Mount Kephart. From there I faced a series of moderate ups and downs, losing and gaining elevation in what the hiking community refer to as "pointless ups and downs". At last, I approached more open territory with very rugged terrain and a steep climb of eight hundred vertical feet to the top of the mountain, then a drop of about two hundred feet to the lodge.

By the time I strolled up to the buildings I was quite tired and sweaty. I checked into my lodge room and soon discovered that my stay would be everything that I hoped it would be. I was pleased. I quickly retrieved a metal bucket to take water to my room and use a wash basin to take a sponge bath. Clean and refreshed, the first thing I did was crawl into my very comfortable bed and rest for about fifteen minutes. After that I took a stroll through the grounds taking photos, then went back to my lodge where I met a young couple from Detroit who were staying there for two nights.

Later I took a walk up to Cliff Tops but the views were obscured by passing clouds so there were no landscape photography opportunities. At 2 o'clock they opened the dining hall for various drinks and I had a couple of cups of lemonade. I then just sat on the covered porch in a rocking chair and enjoyed the passing clouds, some of them enveloping the lodge with fingers of white mist. Temperatures hovered around 64 all that afternoon, into the night, and were the same on the following morning.

Because of Covid the dining hall was closed except for brief trips in to get beverages, and then only masked. So the crew brings dinner and breakfast to your lodge room for the duration. The evening meal was roast beef, green beans, mashed potatoes, baked apples, cornbread, cake, and I had opted for three glasses of wine. I had plenty to eat and turned down offers of seconds when the staff made another pass.

Every other time I have backpacked into the Park backcountry I have had to sleep in a shelter or a tent, using a sleeping bag and hanging my food from a convenient tree to keep it safe from bears and other marauding critters. But that night I slept in a log lodge in a bedroom with a propane heater, on an extremely comfortable mattress between cottons sheets and under two wool blankets with a pair of soft pillows under my head. I slept deeply.

The following morning I rose, shaved, brushed my teeth, deposited the gray water behind the lodge and got ready for breakfast. They opened the dining hall and I retrieved several cups of coffee and soon had a great breakfast delivered: pancakes with sorghum syrup, grits, scrambled eggs, Canadian bacon, and a biscuit with plenty of apple butter. I ate it all and chased it with another cup of coffee. After that I got my pack ready as a rainstorm rolled in (the peak gets 85 inches of rainfall per year). I chose to wait a few minutes to see if the rainclouds would pass over, and they did. As the sun was revealed again I hoisted my pack and took a reluctant leave of LeConte Lodge. 

The hike down wasn't as difficult as the trudge up and I knocked it out in three and a half hours by making no stops at all and pausing only to take a few photos. I had wanted a two-night stay, and the next time I go I will be there for two nights. Because I will go back again. It's rare for an experience to be exactly what you hoped for. Any place like that is worth return trips.

I arrive at the cutoff to The Boulevard.

The Boulevard where the trail had to have cable hand rail installed after a landslide.

Almost there! 3/4 of a mile!

Looking down at the lodge where my room was located. Taken from the office deck.

The dining/living room and my bedroom just beyond.

 

My bedroom.

The dining hall.

The table and washstand in my bedroom with kerosene lamp.

Breakfast, delivered to my room at 8:00 am.

The trail through the high elevation rain forest back to Newfound Gap.

Early August Trip to Smokemont Campground, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Well, I'm retired so I can pretty much head off and take a trip any time I want to. Carole, however, is only semi-retired. She already took her 401k and pension (both of which she invests), but won't be eligible for Social Security for about 15 months or so. Therefore, she wants to keep working until 62.

This past week we headed over to the Great Smoky Mountains for a three-night camping trip. We opted to stay at the Smokemont Campground which we'd never used. Generally we utilize the Elkmont Campground on the other side of the Park. While the trails and scenery and more spectacular there, the traffic can be monstrous beyond description due to that area's proximity to the semi-urban hellholes known as Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Our last long stay at Elkmont was made difficult because of the bumper-to-bumper traffic bleeding into the Park from Gatlinburg.

Not wishing to face that kind of headache again, we opted for the Cherokee side of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park which is subject to less traffic. As it turned out, we made a good choice. The campground is much nicer than we had anticipated. Also, the three  big elk herds that have developed since the repatriation of the species to the parklands have concentrated themselves in enclaves between Cataloochee Valley (where the first animals were released) and the rest of a triangle created by the Qualla Reservation, and Balsam Mountain Campground where it borders the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The herd numbers 240-250 animals currently, and the three main herds are each about 50 to 60 elk with smaller populations interspersed throughout this general area. So if you want to see the elk, the best places to camp or visit are Cataloochee Valley and Campground, Balsam Mountain Campground (the highest campground in the Park), or Smokemont Campground near Oconaluftee where the absolute largest herd congregates regularly. In fact, it's a rare day that a visit to Oconaluftee in the afternoon will not net you at least a peek of at least a few of the giant deer in the later afternoon.

While we were staying at Smokemont we did some hiking, and took some drives to nearby towns. As usual, we cooked most of our meals, but did try a couple of restaurants by driving outside the campground to Bryson City (about nine miles away).

For some reason, despite the fact that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has more bears than ever (at least 1500 black bears now make their homes there), I have gone about three years without seeing so much as a fleeting shadow of one. We were really hoping to be able to take some photos of a bear, but no such opportunity presented itself. A ranger told us that one did come through the campground while we were not at our campsite. So it goes.

We're thinking of heading back to the Park in October for a trip to see the Fall colors. We did that in 2019 and caught them at their peak, which was a first for me. Before that I would get there either too early or too late to see full Fall splendor. But we're also thinking of flying up to New England before Christmas, so that may be what we end up doing instead of pulling the trailer to Cherokee.

As always, we'll have to wait to see what happens.

Part of the herd of 60 elk that showed up at the Oconaluftee Historic Site the day we arrived.

This young bull was stoically enduring a heavy rain at Balsam Mountain Campground.

The only time I've seen a calf nursing in the Park.

Mona Lisa smile.

My son and I photographed this same cow in June of 2020 when we drove up to spend two days in the Park. I recognized her from the scars on her abdomen.

"Peek-a-boo!"

Stuff

 We've been busy lately. Carole retired from her job and is only working part time (she'll take full retirement in less than two years). We continue to visit state, national, county, and forest parks with our travel trailer serving as our base of operations. We're planning two big trips to round out the year, but have found we have to make a list and never get our first choice of destination due to campgrounds being full. From what we read the reason for full campgrounds everywhere is because people went stir crazy during the lockdown and vast numbers of those people have purchased tents and travel trailers and are hitting the roads to travel in record numbers. I believe it.

For years we've talked about taking the Casita trailer to Pennsylvania. That's where we'll likely end up going next. And we want to take a decent Autumn vacation somewhere to view the Fall colors, which we tend to do around Halloween every year. We'd like to continue that tradition as long as we can find a place where we can park the trailer for a few days. We'll likely avoid the Great Smoky Mountains National Park considering the nightmarish traffic we encountered there in 2019.

On the personal front I went to see an insurance planner referred to us by my wife's financial adviser. I switch to Medicare in twelve months and needed advice on supplemental plans to cover the things Medicare does not. She helped me pencil in the basic path I'll follow in one more year. (Nine months, actually, since you receive your Medicare card three months prior to your birthday and have to act at that time.) I remain pretty healthy for a man of 64 and want to stay strong enough to hike, kayak, and backpack for at least another decade. We'll see. I've already lived longer than my dad did, so there's that.

My second WORKING CLASS HERO novel inches closer to completion and the third book is completely plotted. After that I have a new writing project on which I have been tinkering for years. It's something that I very much want to see finished and which I wish to be able to market to a traditional press. Going the traditional route is getting to be tougher--it's almost as bad as trying to crack the professional circle-jerk comic book industry of the 1980s. I wonder if there will even be an independent traditional publishing industry in a few more years, or if we'll see Amazon as a privately held publishing monopoly.

Well, on that happy note I'll take off till next time. We have a kayak trip down the New River planned for this coming week. That's always a pleasure. The extended weather forecast looks promising.

This video is from a family trip we took last week to Damascus, VA to bike the Virginia Creeper Trail. Andy had never done that so we all headed up early last Saturday to rent bike and take the shuttle van to Whitetop Station for the ride down the mountain back to Damascus. We had a blast! However, this video is only of Beaverdam Creek at the nearby Backbone Rock Recreation Area which we visited after the bike ride. My old video editing software won't work on the new desktop computer I bought this week, so I have to use a new program. This video of the creek is my first experiment with that software.

 

Working Class Writer.

I'm getting closer to completing the second of the Working Class Hero superhero novels. I was well into the book when the previous publisher refused to promote the first one and wouldn't commit to the second book. I also, at the time, couldn't get him to relinquish the rights to the first book so I essentially stopped working on the sequel. Then, unexpectedly last year, the publisher returned to me the rights to all of my books and I could proceed.

My  Working Class Hero novel has been selling consistently well for several months. Learning how to advertise on my own has been a learning process, but I've gotten the hang of it.

When the publishing rights were returned to me, I reworked the second book and moved it in an altered direction from where it had been headed. I'm getting a kick out of creating new characters, and adding additional backstory to many of the heroes, villains, and assorted folk from the first novel. My idea all along for Billy B and his cohorts was to emulate the periodical comics of the Silver Age. I want to deliver continuing tales, sometimes with cliffhangers, sometimes wrapping the narrative neatly with a satisfying conclusion.

I've set myself a deadline for BILLY B VERSUS THE TROUBLE BOYS (WORKING CLASS HERO #2), and hope to announce a publication date in the near future. The third book (tentatively titled WORKING CLASS HERO: A BAKER'S DOZEN) is already plotted and outlined. I hope to get both books published in 2021.

 

WORKING CLASS HERO: The Autobiography of a Superhuman.

A Rare Event.

 A couple of days after we got home I walked into the sunroom and looked at something in the front yard. At first I couldn't tell what it was--a brownish lump sitting in the shade under our willow tree. It was moving and I soon realized it was a big bird of prey and seemed to be injured. After a second I saw that it was a red-tailed hawk. The bird's back was to me and the red tail obvious against the green grass. The wings were out at what looked to be an unnatural angle and draping the ground.

Well, the raptor center where birds are rehabilitated is less than two miles away so I figured I'd best survey the situation in case I needed to toss a blanket over the hawk and drive it to the experts.

The second I stepped out the hawk stood up and began to wobble off and I realized it wasn't injured. It had just killed a squirrel and had been using its wings to hide and guard its kill. After a couple of steps it stopped with its prize so that it could turn and face me. I realized this was a rare chance and ran back into the house for my camera, pausing just long enough to fix a telephoto lens. In a few seconds I discovered that the hawk didn't care when I crouched down about seven feet from her and began to take photos.

Since the bird was a large one I reckoned it was a female, who typically grow much larger than the males. As I watched her she began to devour and dismember the squirrel. In much less time than I could possibly have imagined she had consumed about 90% of its corpse; fur, skin, bones, flesh, guts, and all. By the time the rodent had been reduced to the tail, some uneaten muscle tissue, and a bit of spinal column she gathered the remains and herself and launched into the sky, carrying away what tiny bit of the squirrel that was left.

When I walked to the spot where she'd had her lunch I couldn't find even a shred of meat or a drop of blood. A rare sight and event that afforded me some killer photographs.

I doubt I'll get a chance to take a closeup of a wild hawk like this again.

She was busy tearing that squirrel to bits.

I wish I could have anticipated this move when she spread her wings.

Giving me the stinkeye and hovering over her kill.

About how she looked when I first spotted her, only her wings were closer in to her body. At this point she was dragging the squirrel closer to the driveway to move away from me.

Spring Vacation 2021

We just returned from our first vacation of the year. As we often like to do, we journeyed down to Florida to swim, kayak, and snorkel in some of the huge freshwater springs that are peppered across the state, mainly in the panhandle and north-central area. Generally, we like to explore springs we've never encountered, but this time we chose to revisit five that we'd seen in past years: Salt Spring, Wekiwa Spring, Rock Springs, Silver Glen Spring, and Alexander Spring.

My favorite of these is probably Silver Glen. The water clarity there is among the finest I've seen, and it's full of fish and other aquatic life. Basically, it's perfect for photography. The area around the springs is also heavy with wildlife and you never know what's going to come gliding in from the sky or ambling out of the nearby forest.

So, today, here are a few photos from Silver Glen. I'll post some more photos and information about the other places we visited as I unpack and process the 1000+ images and video we shot.

I have to say that this was one of the most perfect, most relaxing vacations we've taken since we bought out Casita travel trailer in 2005. The weather was perfect, and the modifications we made on the trailer before we left proved to be brilliant for us. In the week before leaving we replaced the old carpet with plank flooring and added an eight-inch memory foam mattress to the bed. Both improvements were far better as far as overall comfort for us than we could have imagined.

Our campsite at Salt Spring Recreation Area, a National Forest facility.

 

 

GoPro photo as I snorkeled toward the main vent at Silver Glen Spring.

Striped mullet in the main vent.

The shallows.

The view toward the head spring.